And a Couple Pounds of Dry Ice Until Delivery

In a case of fortuitous timing, our 25+ year old upright freezer has decided to give up the ghost.

My brother likes to buy meat in bulk, ten pounds of this, five pounds of that, whenever a particular type or cut goes on sale (and sometimes I inadvertently "help" which is how we ended up with seven pounds of bacon last week). Everything not destined for immediate consumption ends up in the freezer. He also, for some reason, really likes frozen waffles, and I put the excess chopped mango in there, too.

Last week he noticed his ice cream turning to mush although everything else remained frozen solid. This week the mango started to soften up. Yesterday he called the repairman.

The repair guy was running late so my brother, before leaving for work, gave me his repair price limits beyond which we would junk the old unit but that proved unnecessary as, when the repairman showed up, he took just five minutes (mostly emptying the freezer and taking off a panel) before calling out, "Time to buy a new one!" Turns out the poor thing was chugging along on 10% of its required coolant. Refilling is not an option, not even a possibility, really.

(Everyone keeps calling the coolant freon but I think that's just a case of the word becoming generic, like Aspirin becoming aspirin. In this instance, however, our machine is old enough that the coolant probably was Freon.)

It is fortuitous timing because, this being Labor Day weekend, a number of appliance stores are advertising nice big sales and we can get a larger version of the same model, brand new, with warranty for $500.

Also, I found a nice big forgotten rack of ribs buried down in the back which I transferred to the refrigerator to thaw (further) for our holiday barbecue. So, now I just need to buy the sides and some condiments.